First Date
by MotherCrumpet
Summary: When Lily accidently tells another girl to just ask James Potter out and James actually takes the girl out, Lily must deal with the consequences.


She didn't know why she's said it, probably just to shut Philippa up. Pippa could be so insufferable sometimes, and Lily really was getting tired of hearing about James Potter all the time. Her feelings about him were just so confused, so new, that she only wanted a moment where she didn't have to think about him, and Pippa was ruining it with all her talk of how perfect he was. Now they were going on a date, worse they appeared to be enjoying themselves, and Lily Evans had nobody to blame but herself. She was the one that told Pippa to ask him out since she obviously thought the world of him.

"Just tell him how you feel." Brittany said, rolling her eyes as Lily glanced over at the couple for what seemed like the billionth time.

"Tell who what?" Lily asked, trying and failing to sound as if she didn't know what her friend was talking about. She absently stirred her tea, which had long since gotten cold. "I should have gotten firewhiskey."

"You don't drink." Seth snorted. "Look, you obviously have a thing for James Potter. I know you're trying to stay friendly with Pippa so that it doesn't turn into World War Three in your dorm room, but you deserve to be happy just as much as she does."

"Correction." Hayden, Brittany's twin brother from Ravenclaw said. "She's a twat. You deserve to be happier than she does."

"You have to say that." Lily glanced over at James again, only to find him giving her a desperate look.

"Help me!" He mouthed.

Lily grinned and waved, pretending not to have noticed what he said. She turned back to her three friends. "Well, that makes me feel a lot better."

"Go rescue the poor bloke!" Brittany made a shooing gesture. "And take Hayden with you. He's dead weight."

"Hey!" Hayden shot his sister a wounded look. "It isn't my fault you two chose to come on a date on the one weekend that neither Lily nor I had a date. Plus you chose to come to the most popular place in all of Hogsmeade, and it also isn't my fault we had to sit with you or not at all because the Three Broomsticks is packed."

"Maybe not, but you could leave." Brittany pushed her brother's chair out with her foot.

"Surely you aren't going to let this happen, mate." Hayden turned to Seth.

"Sorry." Seth shrugged. "You might be my best friend, mate, but I'm all about doing whatever Brit wants."

"Whipped." Hayden stood up. "Lil, go rescue Potter from his date. I'll see you all later. Right now I've got to see a man about an owl."

"What do I say?" Lily asked as Hayden walked away.

"Make something up!" Brittany threw her hands up in the air.

"Don't mind her, I was just about to kiss her for the first time when you and Hayden walked up." Seth said.

"Dumbledore needs to see both of you immediately." Brittany said, pushing Lily off the bench and onto the floor.

"You're shameless." Lily said, scrambling to her feet and brushing her skirt off. "Absolutely shameless. I hope Seth decides your breath smells from all that pizza we ate in the kitchens last night and doesn't kiss you for another three weeks."

"I hope James Potter starts making out with Pippa so that you never can kiss him for fear of contracting a fatal disease." Brit shot back. "Now leave."

"She's ticklish on the inside of her right arm." Lily said to Seth. "Enjoy your date!"

"No!" Brittany squealed as Seth started tickling her. Lily paused for a second to hear the satisfying thump as Brit landed on the floor and then made a beeline for James.

"Hey, sorry to interrupt, but Professor Dumbledore said he has to see us right now." Lily said, looking at James.

"He's on a date." Philippa said, giving Lily a very dirty look. "With me."

"I'm sure you understand, Pip." Lily gave her fellow Gryffindor a stunning smile. "It's apparently urgent, or I wouldn't bother you. I know how excited you were about this date, and you two looked like you were having so much fun. I hate to do this, and I wouldn't if it wasn't absolutely necessary."

"Sorry Pippa." James faked an apologetic face. "I'll see you in class tomorrow, yeah?"

He didn't wait for a response before hopping up from the table, yanking on his coat, and propelling Lily towards the coat rack to grab her coat as well. They were out of the Three Broomsticks in less than a minute.

"That bad?" Lily asked, wrapping her scarf around her neck and pulling on her gloves.

"Worse." James groaned. "If you hadn't come and rescued me I would have jumped out the window in less than ten minutes."

"You could have gone to the bathroom and never come back." Lily suggested. "I tried that once and it worked pretty well."

"That was my backup plan. I almost panicked when you didn't come over right away. Sorry for ruining your date with Hayden Davenport. You can go back and meet him now. I assume he left because you were coming to save me."

Lily laughed, "Date? With Hayden? We were NOT on a double date with Seth and Brit. No way."

"Well you two are always together. I just figured that must be the reason." James said, but he had an interesting grin on his face.

"Nope. Hayden is like my brother. I've been living with them since my parents died in that car accident in second year. When you've met all of Hayden's trashy girlfriends and heard all his harebrained ideas you can't be attracted to him. It's not possible."

"Then let's not waste a perfectly good Halloween Hogsmeade trip. What do you want to do?"

"Don't laugh, but I know this place that's really good for their tea, even if it might be the place everyone takes their dates to make out. Britt and I usually just go anyway and make fun of people. Lance took me there one time on a really horrid date, but it was worth it because the tea really is the best in Hogsmeade."

"Please tell me you aren't talking about Madam Puddifoot's." James groaned. "Is it too late to go back and finish my date with Pippa?"

"If I promise not to make you stick your tongue down my throat can we go?"

"I was more worried about you not wanting me to kiss you. You do realize everyone is going to have a field day if they see us, right?" James raised an eyebrow. "The whole school is going to think we're dating."

Lily stopped in the middle of the street. James continued on another few paces before he realized she had stopped and turned back around to face her, waiting patiently until she said whatever it was that was on her mind. "Do you still fancy me?"

James stuck his hands in his pockets nervously. "Honestly? I like you more now that we've become friends than I ever did before, and I don't want to go to the one place in Hogsmeade that exists solely for dates if we aren't on one. I don't think I could sit there with everyone snogging around us and keep myself from kissing you."

Lily grinned and turned on her heel. "Come on."

"Lily." James called. "You can't just not say anything and expect me to follow you!"

"Well, you want to know what I'm going to say. Don't you? So I really think you are going to follow me."

James quickly caught up to Lily and fell into step beside her. "I think if you were going to say you didn't feel the same way about me you would have just told me so in the middle of Hogsmeade. You've done it there before."

"I knew there was a reason you were Head Boy." Lily slipped her hand into James' and laced their fingers together. She glanced up at him and noticed the grin on his face was as dumb looking as the one on her face felt. "Madam Puddifoot's is a tacky place to have our first date."

"So where are we going?" James asked.

"The kitchens; I'm starving, and we can't go back to the Three Broomsticks because Pippa is probably still there. That would be awkward."

"I'm not taking you to the kitchens for our first date when we're already in Hogsmeade. We're going to the Three Broomsticks, and if Pippa sees us and asks we're working on Head business that Dumbledore assigned."

"Mmm. Head business that requires you to snog me? We should get assignments like that more often."

"I plan to be getting them all the time." James laughed and tugged Lily into the little alley beside the Three Broomsticks. He leaned down and kissed her, and when he pulled away, she went up on her tiptoes to prolong the kiss as much as possible.

"Can we please go eat now? You can kiss me as much as you want now, and tonight is Halloween, so I'm expecting a Marauder party in the common room, which means I'm going to need my energy."

James took her by the hand and led her into the Three Broomsticks, both of them eager for what their first date might bring.


End file.
